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Sometimes you have a goal in mind for your story, but you have no idea how to get there. For those times where the end justifies the means there is the Diabolus ex Nihilo or "Devil from Nothing". The Diabolus ex Nihilo is an enemy so foul, so horrible, and so evil that it needs no backstory or reasoning. It just appears from nowhere, does its job of shaking things up and antagonizing the heroes, and then promptly dies. The Diabolus ex Nihilo may get a back story in the future, but it would just be an exercise in retconning.

This trope can often appear in origin stories where it's more important that the characters are introduced than that they do something sensible.

See also the Giant Space Flea from Nowhere, which serves roughly the same function in Video Game gameplay — a boss that pops up at the end of a level for no narrative reason and with no explanation, just because there's supposed to be a boss at the end of the level or the game.

Compare the Generic Doomsday Villain, who has no clear motive for their actions other than being "evil," even if they do in fact have backstory or context. Contrast Start of Darkness, where the villain's backstory is explored in full detail, and Outside-Context Problem, where the mystery behind a villain's origin, motive, and abilities are the source of their threat. ConsiderInvincible Villain, where them just showing up exemplifies how bad things can get. A Diabolus ex Nihilo used by a writer to get out of a corner may be an example of Chandler's Law.

Yes, this may also be a Diabolus ex Machina if it succeeds in doing some damage. See also the Anthropic Principle where the appearance of an otherwise unexplained baddie forms the premise for the entire story. If they appear in the backstory, or disappear as quickly as they appeared, they may overlap with Unknown Character.

Examples:

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Anime & Manga

Digimon Adventure: Apocalymon, the final villain, literally shows up out of nowhere in an outer space-like battlefield, and is fought and defeated within the course of two episodes. Apparently this was actually a case of Executive Meddling, and there was supposed to be far more leadup to Apocalymon, as well as his relation to the Dark Masters.

In 02, Daemon and his followers appeared randomly, had incredibly vague motivations (they want the Dark Spores... for some reason) and are defeated in a few episodes after causing some pointless mayhem. They are then quickly forgotten. The manga version is slightly better about this, in that Daemon is on Oikawa's side rather than against him.

In Frontier, after seemingly defeating Cherubimon and destroying his fortress, the heroes fight an IceDevimon who was imprisoned for terrorizing villages. The lack of hinting towards this and his relatively quick defeat suggests that his only purpose was to fill up half an episode.

Pretty Cure All Stars movies seem to have a tendency to use this trope gratuitously, due to lack of connection between individual Pretty Cure series. The latest of which, in DX3, is the entity simply known as Black Hole. It's best described as The Heartless of every Pretty Cure villain, ever.

Mobile Suit Gundam AGE gets hit with this in its final episode with Zera Gins and his Vagan Gear, though his existence was hinted at earlier in the Kio arc. He shows up at the end of the final battle, when all non-mook Vagan pilots are dead, with his only motivation and lines being "destroy the Gundams." His own side calls him a soulless warrior and their strongest pilot, and it also is mentioned he's a clone of Lord Ezelcant. Then SID shows up and merges with Vagan Gear and he goes berserk causing both sides to ally to try and stop him. Then Kio destroys his Gear SID, and that's that (though Zera himself survives). As AGE was originally conceived as a licensed game by Level-5, Zera is a very direct transplant of the Giant Space Flea from Nowhere.

In Hellsing: The Major has no backstory and no motivation (until he meets Alucard and wants to destroy him simply for being different from him) other than because he simply enjoys war.

Walpurgisnacht serves as at least a partial one in Puella Magi Madoka Magica. There's definitely some build-up to it, but it still takes a backseat to the Awful Truth behind the whole Magical Girl system and Homura's true nature. In the end, its purpose in the plot is more to just show up, smash the city to pieces and either kill Madoka or cause her to turn into an even more powerful witch, forcing Homura to push her own personal Reset Button and try to do the fight over again while saving her. Hell, if it wasn't for Homura, no one would even expect a supremely powerful witch like Walpurgisnacht to just show up and start wrecking everyone's shit.

Pokémon's episode with the evil Togepi. It's never explained why the Togepi is evil or what its motivation was.

Subverted with Dragon Ball Z Cell does verily show up without warning during the Android Saga, but explains his connection to Dr. Gero to make sure he didn't just appear of nowhere.

Played straight with Frieza, however. Despite being one of the most important villains in the franchise, he does not have much of a backstory. His race has never been identified, nor have we ever learned what planet he is from. All we really know is that his family has been running an intergalactic space pirate organization for a long time.

In Naruto, Kaguya shows up out of nowhere (only being mentioned about forty chapters prior to her debut as being the mother of the Sage of the Six Paths and dead for centuries), is revealed to be responsible for all of the Uchiha turning evil, and gets sealed away after a relatively short fight. Her entire purpose is essentially to take out Madara because the author accidentally made him too strong. Despite being several magnitudes stronger than him (she is the single most powerful being in the entire world) she had no true combat experience, so she was easier to defeat.

Comic Books

Superman: The Man of Steel #17 introduces the most (in)famous Devil from Nothing: Doomsday. He basically emerges from the bowels of the earth, squishes a bird, and then goes on a killing spree for no good reason. He's pretty much there just to kill Superman and kick off the "Death" and "Rebirth" story arcs. Later stories revealed his origins, however.

Darwyn Cooke's DC: The New Frontier spends so much time dropping obscure DC character names that it never creates a fleshed out back story or motivation for "The Centre"—a giant living island of dinosaurs determined to cleanse the Earth and then the Solar System. Ironically, the Centre itself is from an obscure source—Dinosaur Island, a Lost World featured in several "Weird War Tales" comics. Its existence was never previously explained, and Cooke decided to reinvent it as an alien menace.

It seems to briefly explain its motives by possessing an Expy for Dr. Seuss, who writes it down in a story before killing himself; it reveals that it's a prehistoric entity which tired of humanity's noise and yearns to leave Earth to explore the solar system. This will require exterminating humanity for... some reason.

Its plan was to wipe out humanity so the Earth can heal itself from all the damages humanity has done.

The Big Bad in DC's Final Crisis wasn't Darkseid. It was a Multiversal Vampire. This means exactly what you think it does: he eats stories. If you didn't read the Final Crisis: Superman Beyond tie-in, he seemed to come out of nowhere. Writer Grant Morrison did, however, intend for Superman Beyond to be an integral part of the story, and it is included in the trade editions of Final Crisis.

A Godzilla comic had Big G be sent back to the time of the dinosaurs, where he was attacked by a giant dragon... thing that was there for some reason; he manages to just barely beat it before being returned to the present.

The feral vampire hag that turned Cassidy in Preacher. She appears biting his neck, gets shot by his brother, and falls back into the bog, never to be seen again.

The vampire that turns Lord Andrew Bennett, title character in I, Vampire. He turns up while Bennett is out riding, mesmerises him, gives a little rant about hating Bennett's positive outlook on life and wanting to show him the dark side and generally screw his life up, bites him, and then promptly gets staked by him. Then Andrew makes it home, filled with angst over his new condition, his wife agrees to be turned by him so that they can spend eternity together, she promptly turns evil, decides to take over the world, declares Andrew to be her enemy when he tries to talk her out of it, and flies off to begin her campaign. And there's your central plot and background set, now on with the episodic story.

Brightest Day had Black Lantern Swamp Thing. It's mentioned a few issues earlier that a Dark Avatar will rise, but the White Ring is vague as to exactly what our heroes will be facing, so it certainly felt like one of these.

The Joker is this; his backstory was introduced much, much later than the character and even in there, he outright stated that's probably false. Despite that he's still managed to rack up a body count any villain worth their salt would be jealous of, and is the person regular (and super) criminals tell stories of to scare one another.

Severed has the unnamed Ambiguously Human salesman who goes by the name of Mr. Fisher (along with several others, all of them false). "Fisher" is a mysterious man who eats children to consume their dreams. No reason is ever given for this. "Fisher" claims to be hundreds of years old, and indeed, he never ages at any point in the comic. No backstory is ever given for him.

The ending of the American Astro Boy movie. Just as the day is saved and everyone is celebrating, a giant sun-shaped alien with tentacles that shoots lasers out of its one giant eye attacks the town. No reason, no foreshadowing, someone just shouts "Alien!" and it's there. It's probably one last Shout-Out to the Artificial Sun from one of the earlier Astro Boy series.

The Thief and the Cobbler: The Mighty One-Eye, and the entire race of monstrousOne-eyed men he is the leader of (simply called the "One-Eyes") simply appear into the film without any kind of backstory. They want to conquer and destroy a Golden City, also without any explained motivation.

This is true to the characters, but the audience knows that they're from a previously separated Lego bin in the real world.

The Loc-Nar from Heavy Metal is never given a backstory, but it's the embodiment of Pure Evil that drives all the vignettes in the movie.

In the climax of The Fox and the Hound, when Amos Slade and Copper pursue Tod, an enormous bear appears out of nowhere, attacking and almost killing Slade and Copper. Tod, seeing Copper in danger, returns to fight the bear and save his pursuers, and the bear gets a Disney Villain Death. The bear was either hungry and hunting, or, more likely, defending his territory from the intruding human and dog.

Justified in Spock's exact line, "Only human arrogance would assume the message 'must be meant for Man'." One might imagine it was quite chatty with the cetacean life it was sent to contact.

According to the creators, having their conversation with the whales at the end translated was considered and rejected. Given the brevity of said conversation, it didn't go well.

The Fifth Element introduces The Great Evil, an angry, black sphere that doesn't even have a proper name let alone a motivation. But how would Bruce Willis find a cute thousand-year-old alien girl to nail without it?

Krull: The Beast appears from outer space, invades the world and randomly crashes wedding parties all in the name of being bad. While the backstory of the Cyclops indicates that the Beast has done this sort of thing on other worlds before, there's otherwise no backstory for the Beast itself explaining where it came from and why it decided to go about invading worlds.

The Sequel Hook in the previous film does strongly imply that he escaped from Arkham, but that only explains where he came from immediately prior to showing up.

Many Werewolf Movies, such as An American Werewolf in London, Ginger Snaps, and Wolf, in which the protagonists are bitten and become werewolves, do not go into very much detail, if any at all, in explaining where the original werewolf came from—or the werewolf who made them, or who made that werewolf, and so on.

Frankenstein Conquers The World: The "International" cut climaxes in a fight between Frankenstein's Monster (in city-stomping kaiju form) and a giant octopus who suddenly shows up out of nowhere. Not only that, but it's a famous Japanese Mountain Lake Octopus, as most of the action takes place in the "Japanese Alps." Although it was filmed at the request of the American distrubutor, he apparently felt the end result was just too silly. The scene was cut from both the Japanese and American versions, but for reasons unknown, was kept in the "International" cut (English language, but for territories outside America.)

Monster X/Keizer Ghidorah from Godzilla Final Wars. He just appears out of nowhere (though it's implied he was inside the meteor "Gorath" that was heading to Earth), fights Godzilla to a draw, transforms into his more-powerful form, nearly curb-stomps Godzilla to death, and then is ultimately defeated after Godzilla gets a power boost.

The killer in HellBent is given no origin or motivation, never has his name or actual appearance revealed and isn't even mentioned in the credits. Also, making a literal example of the trope, he's dressed as the devil.

The Leopold and Loeb-esque duo in Funny Games give various conflicting accounts of who they are and where they came from, but they're obviously all lies. They have no backstory and no reason to exist except to serve as villains for the movie you're so sadistically viewing, You Bastard.

Lord of Illusions: The Big Bad Nix is an Evil Sorcerer with immense eldritch powers, which he states he will soon use to kill all of humanity. Where he came from or how he got his powers is never explored. When someone questions what he is, he simply replies "a man who wanted to be a god... then changed his mind".

The Hitcher: When the police arrest John Ryder, they can't match his finger prints to any existing criminals, nobody knows anything about him, and even his name is undoubtedly an alias (in the remake, it was stolen from one of his victims). It's as if the desert just spat out Death in human form.

Literature

The Silmarillion by J. R. R. Tolkien: Ungoliant; she is said to have "descended from the Outer Darkness, maybe, that lies in Eä beyond the walls of the World." She destroys the Two Trees and almost eats Morgoth. After breeding with lesser spiders, she just... wandered off.

"Some have said that she ended long ago, when in her uttermost famine she devoured herself at last."

The History of Middle-earth gives more details, with Ungoliant originally written as an Eldritch Abomination 'personification of primeval night' before the world was made, and later this being changed to her being a Maia and former disciple of Morgoth who grew strong enough to equal him in his long years of imprisonment. Also, Ungoliant was originally planned to re-enter the story — Eärendil slew her in one of his adventures on the way to Valinor. It's likely this would have ended up in The Silmarillion if Tolkien had ever finished that part of the story.

With the exceptions of Blaine the Mono and Andy the Messenger Robot (Many Other Functions!), pretty much every robot in The Dark Tower. They show up, kill, maim, or psionically alter someone, then are either destroyed or returned to hibernation.

"The One" from Animorphs. It is a literary Giant Space Flea from Nowhere, introduced in the very last book after the Yeerks are defeated. There is no explanation of where it came from or what it wants, it merely becomes the remaining Yeerks' new god, assimilates Ax, shapeshifts to a bunch of random things to freak the heroes out and gets its spaceship rammed. K. A. Applegate's comments seem to indicate that she just wanted the good guys to get screwed by a new war and created a Diabolus ex Machina to let them go out in a blaze of glory.

Whatever it was that sent Jake to a Bad Future, as some kind of test, in The Familiar, the definitive Bizarro Episode of the series. Some fans wanted it and the One to be the same thing, if only to make each have some overall relevance, but Word of God shot the idea down.

In the Warrior Cats series, the Big Bad Tigerstar had nine lives at the beginning of the (then) final book, The Darkest Hour. In order to avoid making him seem like a pathetic weakling, the authors had a random cat called Scourge show up, kill Tigerstar all nine times, kill the protagonist, Firestar, and take over the Clans. And then Scourge died.

The Lady of the Green Kirtle in The Silver Chair has absolutely zero backstory whatsoever. We know she's a "Northern Witch," and she might be somehow connected with the infamous White Witch...but that's about it.

Swedish writer Simona Ahrnstedt gives us Carl-Jan Rosenschiöld in her debut novel Överenskommelser. To be fair, this novel has three villains (because one creep obviously wasn't enough), whose misogyny is disgusting even by the standards of the time in which they live (the 1880s). But the other two are at least given backstories, which can somewhat explain how they ended up being that way. But with Rosenschiöld, the guy is just there to be evil! He's a sadistic serial abuser of women, who only wishes to marry female protagonist Beatrice (who's like forty years younger than him) because he wants a virgin. We do get to see him die, but not until after he has brutally raped and almost killed Beatrice on their wedding night. Only after his death are we given some backstory: Rosenschiöld has murdered one previous wife and driven another previous wife into suicide. But we're never told how he could become so evil.

Live Action TV

Star Trek: The Next Generation's pilot episode introduces "Q", a god like entity that begins harassing the crew seemingly for the sake of it. He simply appears on the bridge and creates unnecessary drama. While he eventually becomes a beloved character by the end of the series, he was unimportant to the plot of the pilot. Word of God says that the pilot was originally going to be one episode, but Executive Meddling forced it to become a two part episode. So Q was made up to fill the extra hour.

Star Trek: The Original Series had the Doomsday Machine from the episode of the same name, a giant weapon that flies through space eating everything it comes in contact with, up to and including entire planets. Spock believes it came from another galaxy, and Kirk theorizes it may have been built as a form of Mutually Assured Destruction in a war, intended as a bluff or deterrent but ultimately used, however the true origins and purpose of the machine are never revealed.

The enemy from the Doctor Who episode "Midnight" — we never see its true form, or learn its name. It just appears out of nowhere, possesses Sky, places the Doctor and everyone with him in grave danger, and is eventually defeated — but certainly not killed — by a random bystander, as it has incapacitated the Doctor. Considering how often the Doctor exhibits an encyclopedic knowledge of... everything... throughout his adventures, many count the episode as one of the eeriest in all of Doctor Who, to the point of That One Case.

In Kamen Rider Decade: All Riders vs. Great Shocker, there's King Dark, the Big Bad of Kamen Rider X, who only rises after all the other villains are killed. It was never hinted anywhere in the movie that he would even appear at all. Since there is already a personification of the Great Leader, recurring Bigger Bad of the Showa era in the eponymous Decade, it means that there are two Great Leaders running amuck. He was probably just included to give an excuse to use the giant Kamen Rider J (the movie did say All Riders).

The creators of Merlin (2008) promised in an interview that the end of season four would end with an intriguing Cliffhanger in which a previously seen "evil" character would reappear. Most fans bet their money on Mordred. However, it turned out to be something completely random. In an early season four episode Merlin discovers a dragon's egg, hatches it, and calls the baby dragon Aithusa, said to be a symbol of the forthcoming Golden Age of Camelot. The audience was given absolutely no reason to believe that Aithusa was anything but a harmless baby dragon, who is not seen or mentioned until the end of season four, where it appears in the forest to heal an injured Morgana for no apparent reason and fly off again.

In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the First Evil is the Cosmic Horror personification of evil. It wants to make people hurt and sin because, well, it's evil. There's not really much else to say about it, aside from what's on the tin.

In Breaking Bad the Aryan Brotherhood, though more normal than other examples, serves this purpose. They come out in the final season with not much build up, being Neo Nazis is good enough to explain why they are bad guys and are so good at what they do (mostly killing and breaking people) that they kill any other conflicts the series had that is not them.

Mythology

In Hesiod's Theogony—an early Trope Codifier of Greek Mythology—Typhon is one of these. He shows up out of nowhere to wreck havoc after the Olympians win their war against the Titans and Giants. Zeus defeats him and the world is finally at peace. Some later retellings either edit this bit out for being too random or write the battle as a more grandiose affair.

Various tellings of the story change a bit of that; Typhon is described as a child of Gaia and Tartarus, set against Zeus by Gaia when she realized his rule wouldn't be much better than his father's. The battle was less a curb stomp, with Typhon having the edge early on (ripping out Zues' tendons) before being defeated by having a mountain dropped on him.

Professional Wrestling

The World Wrestling Federation has done this twice with Underfaker and Fake Kane. They showed up, confused people about their relationship to The Undertaker and Kane, were eventually defeated by the real thing, and then vanished.

Boogeyman in Ohio Valley Wrestling. However, after about three appearances, officials began to anticipate his coming and took measures to stop him, even contacted law enforcement. Nothing they did ever worked and he would quickly depart into ether almost as quickly as he arose. Oh, and he was a "heroic" version, as the crowd quickly took a liking to him, to the point he was cheered when he interrupted handicap match between the already injured Alexis Laree against Beth Phoenix and Shelly Martinez and attacked Laree. So Boogeyman turned to mainly beating up wrestlers the audience did not like, making him even more popular. Unlike most examples, Boogeyman did have an explained though nonsensical motivation, he wanted to be a professional wrestler. He was eventually given a backstory on WWE Smackdown too.

Legend of the Five Rings' notorious Hidden Emperor story arc featured Goju Adorai. He appeared halfway through the arc which continued to focus on other evil characters such as the Kolat, Onnotangu, and the possessed Toturi. Adorai finally shows up during the climatic battle at Oblivion's Gate as the leader of the Lying Darkness's forces where he is defeated with virtually no information ever given about his back story or motivations.

Don John in Much Ado About Nothing. It would have taken Will all of 2 minutes to write one line about him being angry at Claudio for some past slight, but instead he wrote the character to be evil for evil's sake.

Video Games

Jenova in Final Fantasy VII appears from the sky two thousand years ago and murders most of the planet's population. After being dismembered and frozen she is revived in modern times and starts all over again. No motive or origin is ever given.

Sephiroth hints that the cycle of parasitic destruction is Jenova's true purpose: it crashes into a planet, sucks out the Lifestream energy, and then leaves to crash into another planet. However, it's very vague at best. Sephiroth's goals may be his own, rather than an extension of Jenova's. However, in Advent Children Sephiroth does explicitly claim that he shall sail the Cosmos to find another planet to find a shining future, like his mother once did. So maybe he really is following Jenova's Goal after all. As usual of the trope, the explanation comes 10 years after the game and from a different writing team.

In Dirge of Cerberus, Omega Weapon's purpose is similar to Jenova's: to take the life energy of the planet and find a new planet when planet-shattering catastrophes happen.

Necron in Final Fantasy IX. The last boss of the game, it is basically the god of death, and where he comes from, how you get to the area he resides in, or why he wants to kill you all is not even close to explained.

And then there's Chrono Cross, where the final boss is yet again Lavos, who exists in a non reality unplace of infinite nothing never where the countless versions of people are erased over. Oh, and then he decides to eat all of time because of Crono's actions in the first game.

The titular mothership of the Fallout 3 add-on Mothership Zeta deserves mention. Without any previous foreshadowing, the Lone Wanderer is abducted by the aliens and must spend the next several hours (days, in game time) fighting his way through the mothership just to get home. At which point, the entire experience is never mentioned again. What exactly the aliens were doing with all the people they've been abducting over the past thousand years or so is left vague at best.

The Aurum in Kid Icarus: Uprising are explicitly stated to "come from and return to nothing". They are a strange robotic alien Hive Mind that come from nowhere and become the main threat for Chapters 15-17, and force Palutena, Hades, and Viridi to form an Enemy Mine.

In the Legend of Skyloft told in The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword's introductory sequence, it is told that one day, demons suddenly rose from the ground out of nowhere and started killing everyone, forcing the Goddess Hylia to raise a human settlement above the clouds to keep them safe. The plot during the game proper deals is caused by the remnants of the demonic forces, but the game's plot doesn't touch on where they came from.

Clockwerk from the Sly Cooper series. It's known that he was jealous of the Coopers for their superior thieving reputation, and that he turned himself into a robot to gain immortality so he could continue to hunt them for centuries. However, it is not known why he became a thief in the first place, nor does he have any backstory prior to becoming a thief (for example, if he had a family or a Freudian Excuse). It is also unclear how he was able to turn himself into a robot when he was born thousands of years before the concept of robotics even began, or if Clockwerk is even his real name.

The Mask of Dark Earth from the third game also qualifies.

In Resident Evil Nemesis, there's well, Nemesis itself. Its specific origins have never been explained in any canon medium, which is weird because just about every other creature Umbrella has ever thrown at Jill and the other heroes has some kind of documentation or a plot point revealing what it used to be or how it was created. The closest one there is to an explanation is that it's a Tyrant imbued with an NE-T parasite developed by Umbrella's French division. Interestingly, Nemesis does get an origin story in the related film series.

At the end of the Wasteland questline in Billy vs. SNAKEMAN, a villain appears, explains that the odd sickness you've been suffering from is casued by his genjutsu/poisons/cloning technique (it's a different villain and trick depending on which primary bloodline you have), that he's been manipulating you from the very start, but has decided that you've outlived your usefulness. Then you beat him up and force him to join your team. At no point was there even a hint that the questline had a villain - you were just scavenging for shinies and picking up cool allies.

Bad Girl in No More Heroes, the 2nd Ranked Assassin. Most Bosses have some background, history (some tragic, making them a little sympathetic), and/or motivation explaining why they're killers, but Bad Girl has nothing but rage, hatred, and insanity. No mention of friends or family, her past, any Freudian Excuse, no motivation for what she does other than For the Evulz. Travis takes note of it, and it's what disgusts him about her the most.

Web Comics

Parodied in Adventurers!—possibly even a direct parody of Necron—when, after finally defeating the distinctly non-Space-Flea Final Boss and fleeing his collapsing lair, the party is suddenly faced with Necrevil, "the embodiment of evil itself!"... and they just keep running.

Homestuck kind of plays with this trope. The nonlinear nature of the story means that for the reader it doesn't come out of nowhere, but from the perspective of most of the trolls Bec Noir was this, suddenly appearing shortly after they defeated their Final Boss.

Slade's backstory and motives were never revealed, despite being the Big Bad for the first two seasons, the Dragon with an Agenda in the fourth, and a minor presence throughout the series. The heroes, especially Robin, speculate as to who he is, but nothing concrete is ever reached.

Red X has no explanation or origin for his appearance, and no back story. He just appears out of nowhere and makes trouble for everyone. Beast Boy tries to speculatenote He thinks it's Jason Todd, but Raven says it could be anyone and no one else really gives it any thought.

The Monsters of the Week from the episodes "Stranded" and "Things Change" come out of nowhere and, though the characters wonder out loud what they are, are never given even a vague explanation.

Dr. Claw in Inspector Gadget is a faceless enemy that is constantly plotting against the titular hero. His organization seems to have no other purpose than to "Get Gadget". Claw's face was not even revealed until nearly twenty years after the show's run ended. Except on a toy.

Transformers: The Movie features Big Bad Unicron who drifts out of the vastness of space and starts eating things and making bargains with Decepticons. Though he appeared from the vacuum, he certainly didn't vanish afterward though.

Further incarnations were slightly more careful with this. Armada hinted he was in the background for a while, Energon followed as a sequel, and Transformers Prime dropped hints about him every now and then before he appeared for real.

Thunder Cats: In the series finale, after Lion-O fights an epic final battle against his Arch-Enemy Mumm-Ra, the Ancient Spirits of Evil randomly throw "their champion," a giant warrior named Pyron, at Lion-O just to fill up the last couple of minutes or so of the episode.

Although not many of the villains have elaborate origins, the nanobots in "Nano of the North" seem especially inexplicable. They're a swarm of microscopic robots that come out of a cloud that forms over Townsville but nothing else surrounding it, start devouring all the carbon to make more of themselves, and demonstrate some kind of group intelligence in the way the cloud changed to focus the forces onto the Powerpuff Girls. Although they're all destroyed by the end of the episode, no clue is given as to their origin or why they were targeting Townsville specifically, and indeed no one even asks.

The evil alien force from "Forced Kin" suddenly comes from space to conquer Earth with no explanation, and turns out to be so strong he forces Mojo Jojo and the Powerpuff Girls to work together.

In the Backstory of Equestria as told in "Hearth's Warming Eve" in My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, the Windigos were these. They were said to be creatures that feed on The Power of Hate, but they came out of nowhere and had absolutely no explanation for what they planned to do with the winter they were causing, but they forced the three races of pony to band together, since they were able to create a beacon of friendship-powered fire to burn them away.

In Regular Show, Mordecai and Rigby are vying for a chair and bet on it in rock-paper-scissors. After being stuck in tie for 100 times, a monster from out of nowhere comes to eat the chair, they were able to make it go away by breaking the tie.

This is actually the formula many of their episodes run by. The characters start off doing something fairly mundane, like going on a date or buying fast food, then all of a sudden, the fantastic enemy of the week pops up to give the characters a new conflict.

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